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geirnord writes "Previously a US-only device, the Amazon Kindle 2 is now finally available in an international edition. The new device is identical to the Kindle 2, with the exception of Edge and 3G support. That means Whispernet-like functionality over most of the world."
Reader pasm notes a report at The Guardian which points out higher ebook prices for international Kindle users. "When asked by the Guardian precisely how much downloads would cost, an Amazon.co.uk spokesman revealed that foreign customers — including those in Britain — would be paying $13.99 (£8.75) per book instead of the American price of $9.99 (£6.25). That amounts to a 40% premium for the same title." The spokesman said the higher prices reflected higher operating costs and VAT rates.

screw amazon. They've ignored us Canucks too long for us to care about them anymore. I wouldn't buy a Kindle even if I could.

Seconded. I recently decided I wanted an ebook reader, looked at what was available in Canada, and bought one. If the Kindle had been available, it *might* have been what I bought, but since it wasn't, it's just a lost sale for Amazon. Every month they delay entering the Canadian market is just that much smaller their potential market becomes.

Yeah, I was really hoping to get one for Christmas, so this pretty much sucks. If it's not out by December, I'll probably get a Sony eBook reader (yes, Sony is evil, but I like their products, and I have a high tolerance for evil.) or buy a Kindle off eBay.

For those who know better than I, if I buy an American Kindle off eBay, how well will it work in Canada? Will I be able to buy the ebooks off the American store (with a Canadian CC) and just load them with USB, or will the DRM cause me too many problems?

I am not a Canadian, but I wouldn't count on the product working well, given that Amazon suppresses digital content to anybody they don't happen to care for. Australia currently falls into this category; digital copies of books are unavailable where Amazon is perfectly happy to sell you a dead-tree version.

I happen to prefer the latter, but for some texts, it would be nice to forego the exorbitant US freight costs.

I am not a Canadian, but I wouldn't count on the product working well, given that Amazon suppresses digital content to anybody they don't happen to care for. Australia currently falls into this category; digital copies of books are unavailable where Amazon is perfectly happy to sell you a dead-tree version.

I happen to prefer the latter, but for some texts, it would be nice to forego the exorbitant US freight costs.

To be fair, I really doubt it's that they have an axe to grind against Australians. More likely is some annoying conflicts with Australian laws, publishers, organisations and/or cell phone companies. It really wouldn't be a smart decision to not release content to Australia because a dingo ate Bezos' baby or he was molested by a Kangaroo or something.

Same as Canada. I'm sure they want to have my money, but are either waiting for our (terrible) phone companies to stop sucking, or some conflict with Canadian

They are going to be available in South Africa, but how's this--they ship with a US 110v power supply, so to use it you'll have to buy a separate adaptor. Is it the same in the UK or other 220v countries?

Does the Sony require a Microsoft or Apple environment on a PC? I'm Linux-only, and - as far as I've been able to tell - the Sony is a non-starter for me because the only way to buy is by using their special software. Even if I did have a Microsoft or Apple PC, I'd be frightened of Sony's "special software" given their rootkit history. So: Am I wrong? Is there a way to purchase for the Sony w/o requiring a Microsoft or Apple PC environment? Thanks...Andrew

Depends.

If you want to use DRM free stuff, no problem. Linux is fine. And get Calibre. A good cross platform format shifting book manager app. Most readers are seen as USB drives, so you can drag and drop if you prefer. The current Sony models support ePub among other formats, so plenty of books available. I've got a Cybook, and have no problems with Linux.

If you want to buy DRM encumbered books, then you will need Windows currently. Adobe does the DRM variant of ePub that Sony uses these days, so eventual

Depends on your tastes. Lots of PD books. Quite a few scifi and fantasy. Outside Amazon and Sony book stores, there are quote a few ePub and.mobi DRM free books. Check out Mobileread.com for links to various places that do special offers from time to time.

If you install Calibre, it will convert PDF to which every format your reader supports. Works cross platform, and it is very good. PDF is not so hot on most, if not all e-book readers. ePub and Mobi are far far better.

To me, it's simply amazing that it take a company like amazon even brings this out, and I cheer them for it. Finally something that caters to the world outside the US (sometime companies pretend it doesn't exist) and more importantly for me, international travelers especially without being raped. If this is like the US version, no monthly fees even!

OTOH, you can't even take your cell phone with you internationally where some peope would need it most, without being screwed by outrageous voice/data rates:ht [att.com]

I treat all DRM-encumbered purchases as an extended rent/lease agreement. Books (and music) tend to be one-off items for me, except in a few extraordinary cases. In these cases I prefer the special/ultimate/extended/uncut/annotated edition, and purchase the physical object anyway.

I wonder how much operating costs would be. Is the internet is the wireless net in Britain really a lot more expensive? They do realize that shipping a product online has the same operating costs anywhere on the earth... since you can do it from anywhere in the Earth. The whole thing is total BS.

I think the real reason is, Europeans are used to taking it in the ass from electronics industries why not do that too? Yay +40% on anything that includes a chip for no reason... apparently on files now too.

That's fine. But misrepresenting themselves (re. lying) to look innocent is pretty shameful and I have no qualms calling them on that. And Europe has increased prices on pretty much anything electronic, something the free market hasn't solved. So they don't have a huge variety of choice. Sort of like the companies have the right to do w/e they want, and I have the right to moan and whine about it.

And, Amazon subsidizes the cost of the ebook -- they pay the publisher the full print price that they would pay for a paper copy of the book, and are subsidizing the cost of the book to keep it at $9.99 in the US.

If the paper book itself costs more elsewhere, they'd have to eat more of the loss unless the ebook price went up.

The publishers are the problem, not Amazon. The publishers are fighting tooth and nail to prevent the success of ebooks.

The publishers are the problem, not Amazon. The publishers are fighting tooth and nail to prevent the success of ebooks.

This is a rather cretinous policy; it would make more sense to take advantage of a "bums on seats" strategy of selling cheaply to many. Given that the entire burden of distribution is taken off their hands, it would literally be money for nothing.

Everyone seems to think that the distribution of physical books is somehow expensive and troublesome. It isn't.

The publisher puts the books into boxes and ships the box full of books (maybe 25 of them) for $10. That works out to be around $0.40 per book, delivered to the store.

The cost of printing a softcover/paperback book is less than $2. You can have your very own book printed in small quantities for this price. So where does all the money go for a $20 currently popular book?

You ever think it might go to the publisher that fronted the author money, paid for the editors, marketed the book and promoted it? Gosh, those costs might not change for an eBook at all.

Guess what? Physical books aren't that expensive to distribute, and eBooks have almost identical costs. Sure on a $20 book you might save $2.50 but only $2.50. Waiting for the $1 currently popular eBook? You will be waiting a long time.

The publisher puts the books into boxes and ships the box full of books (maybe 25 of them) for $10. That works out to be around $0.40 per book, delivered to the store.

You missed out the bit where the book store typically takes 30-40% of the cover price from the publisher, often on a sale or return basis. *That's* where all the money goes, and that's something that could change dramatically with digital distribution. Publishers who start selling ebooks can make money with dramatically lower prices. Those who can't, simply wont' survive - they are competing with other publishers, but also with all the self-publishers on the internet. You'll notice that the publishers who a

You missed out on the production costs, not of the book actually purchased, but for the 90%+ of the books published which don't sell well enough to cover the author fees and editorial salaries, marketing, etc.

It's a gambling business. No one but idiots takes a big gamble unless there's a potential big payoff in sight.

The physical books are just the near worthless chips (except to the readers of the good/great ones).

You missed out on the production costs, not of the book actually purchased, but for the 90%+ of the books published which don't sell well enough to cover the author fees and editorial salaries, marketing, etc.

Please reread my post. Origination is the term used in the publishing industry for production costs (author,editorial, design). All books have this cost of course, so those that don't sell can make a loss - much like any other business.

I agree book publishing is a gamble, but publishing ebooks is actually far less of a gamble, because as I pointed out, there are significant differences in costs between printing paper books and selling them to bookstores, and selling ebooks online. Bookstores take a signific

You ever think it might go to the publisher that fronted the author money, paid for the editors, marketed the book and promoted it? Gosh, those costs might not change for an eBook at all.

Indeed, they may be fixed, but they are amortised over the entire distribution of the book. It doesn't take too long to recoup cost of editing if the book sells: the facts that publishers still exist and are profitable attests to this. Of course, once those costs are covered the difference between cost and sell price b

Waiting for the $1 currently popular eBook? You will be waiting a long time.

Which is exactly why e-books aren't catching on. Sure people care about the upfront price of the hardware, but not as much as the cost of the content. $10 e-books don't sell because the price point is too high for a digital piece of entertainment I'm not sure if I'll like. There's a reason why Redbox with their $1 video rentals is selling like crazy. When you get to that $1 price point, suddenly it doesn't matter as much if you threw away your dollar on something awful.

The EU VAT policy directives specifically categorise ebooks and audio books as books, and thus *supposed* to be within the reduced VAT bands.

Following its policy line in the field of reduced rates of VAT established in its Communication of July 2007 (COM (2007) 380 final), the Commission adopted a proposal for a Council Directive amending Directive 2006/112/EC as regards reduced rates of VAT : COM(2008)428 [europa.eu]:...allow reduced rates for:

* children's nappies;
* audio books, CD's, CD-ROMs or other physical support that predominantly reproduce the same information content as printed books;
* few other technical adaptations already proposed in 2003, which are still valid, as equipment, aids and other appliances for disabled or services linked with waste treatment, etc.

Amazon has a long history of basically ignoring EU law when it suits it. For example, Amazon.co.UK insisted for years on charging for VAT for books delivered to Ireland (when the UK still charged VAT). Did it refund that improperly charged VAT for Irish customers when it finally relented? No. See also: One-Click Patent. Amazon likes to borrow a lot of the oxygen about the freedom of information and open markets and the disincentivising quality of software patents, etc, but when it comes down to it, it's as aggressive and exclusionary and predatory as Apple or Microsoft.

Did it refund that improperly charged VAT for Irish customers when it finally relented?

Of course not, because that money had already been paid along to the government.

You are talking like Amazon actually benefits from collecting higher VAT. They don't. VAT money is a tax, which is paid along to the government. Of course, if Amazon has been charging VAT while keeping the money, then we are talking about large scale tax fraud. Claiming that something is VAT on the receipt and than not treating it as such in accounting is highly illegal.

While your answer is logical and, on the surface, correct, it assumes perfect accounting procedures. However, if Irish tax authorities did not require VAT remitted to them for books sold, and Amazon was collecting said VAT, then where did the VAT go? Having dealt with VAT returns, I do know that while the wheels of revenue and excise turn extremely slowly, they do turn, and eventually, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday, you will get a VAT credit for overpayment.

"Providing the wireless download service had proven a sticking point in the company's attempt to launch the Kindle outside America, after the retailer failed to come to an agreement with various mobile phone networks around the world. To push through the launch, the company instead chose to partner with American phone company AT&T, which already has its own international roaming deals around the world - including with British networks O2, V

Despite the quote, they are making shit up. We have existing data services in Europe that are cheaper and faster than the US equivalent. There is no need for Amazon to "partner" with any specific mobile network. And WTF are they talking about roaming for ? We are in our home countries - we will not BE roaming. We don't have AT&T accounts based in the US. Are they expecting us to make a cell phone call to the US just to download an ebook ? If they publish the books and let the device have a user accessib

*you* arent the mobile customer in this case, amazon is. The device they're selling you comes with free cellular access, the whole point being it's entirely self contained and doesnt depend on you phone contract. So yes, they need to negotiate with the phone companies. Amazon wants to make money, if it'd been cheaper to go with a European carrier over the kludgey legal hack of using AT&T (and thus AT&Ts already negotiated network deals) they would have. Sounds to me like the EU providers made it too

Why not just eliminate the free cellular access, and just use WiFi for the foreign models instead? The "free cellular access" thing always seemed like an unsustainable gimmick to me. It's not like many users would be inconvenienced by not having it. It seems like an unnecessary dependence on complex deals with unrelated entities. Amazon should just drop the price slightly, and not have to deal with the costs and hassles of dealing with phone companies (or including cellular hardware in the device).

But, there's also the exchange rate, they'll be selling in euros and as we all know, $1 = 1.5 € (roughly) so they have to adjust their prices accordingly (same for UKP), as all of the other US companies routinely do.

VAT is just one aspect. Besides it might only be 5% on books but there's the sales tax, which in the US is more like 10%. So you have to fit that in somewhere as well.

So you end up with prices that are around 170% US prices. It all makes sense.

Although, your way of converting may be closer to the way Amazon does it. It is almost always cheaper to import books from the US version of Amazon and pay for international shipping than to get them from the European Amazon stores.

Its very useful if you're interested in reading fiction and mostly-text magazines on a regular basis, and would like to carry a large library with you. Its not especially good for reference usage as the screen refresh rate is too slow, and the built-in web-browser is very limited -- only really much good for looking up things in wikipedia (which can be very nice, however).

Compared to other e-book readers -- its more constrained but more user-friendly. The built-in wireless makes it very easy to buy books

Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps thinks that e-reader prices need to come down even more if the devices are going to become mainstream products, however. She suggested $99 as a price that would be much more likely to lure consumers.
She said people "have somewhat unrealistic expectations of how much consumer electronics in general, and e-readers in particular, should be."

Considering that every consumer gadget falls in price dramatically over time, I'll just wait for when I can get an ebook reader at Walmart or Target for $49 or less. I remember when the MP3 players came out for hundreds of dollars and now you can get them for under $50 and they play CDs too.

As these things become more popular, more factories will open up to produce the screens, the cost will drastically come down from its current $60 [businessweek.com].

It will happen. You just need to be patient and let the first adopters g

For commodity hardware, a rule of 1.5x the US price is quite accurate, but for those a little bit more rare, it goes all the way up to 2.5x. If the Kindle becomes available here (which I strongly doubt), I would fully expect a price of $550-600.

Actually, the Kindle will be available in the UK (as the summary says). Although at the moment it has to be paid for in dollars and shipped from the US, Amazon says 'In the future, we plan to introduce a UK-centric Kindle experience'.

If I want to read fiction, I can easily grab a book and read it... where a portable device is *really* handy, however, is being able to carry a large number of books in a small space at once... such as reference material, and it is impractical to carry some 50 to 70 odd pounds of books everywhere. Thus, I want a portable device for reading documents that have already been formatted for 8.5x11, usable in any lighting condition where one could otherwise read conventional printed material (ie, laptop and notebook screens are not adequate because they are not easily readable in bright sunlight). Plastic Logic is coming out with a 10.4" diagonal screen reader soon that satisfies this contrast requirement, but even that's still about a third smaller than a full letter-sized screen.

If I want to read fiction, I can easily grab a book and read it... where a portable device is *really* handy, however, is being able to carry a large number of books in a small space at once... such as reference material, and it is impractical to carry some 50 to 70 odd pounds of books everywhere.

I completely agree, personally I find one to two book to be "reasonable" to carry around. What I would REALLY like to see is a book reader that:

Well, there hasn't really been a market for localized ebooks in any of the smaller countries around the world so far.

Only place you could get them in large quantities were the reader's manufacturer's websites, and they only catered to large markets.

Why would any Finnish publisher even bother with making any of their books available as ebooks, when there were probably less than a thousand ebook readers in all of Finland. Same with Denmark, Norway, Sweden and all the other small locales.

While a lot of us would like something in that size, I think quite a lot of manufacturers are looking at the netbook market for inspiration.

We don't see many netbooks with a 14.3" (A4 diagonal) or 13.9" (Letter diagonal) size screens. They're all around 10" (you mentioned the 10.4" coming out).

And once you have the screen, you still need a bezel, and some kind of input device as well, unless you want it to be an expensive touch screen model as well. I wouldn't mind, as it'd be nice to add notes, comments an

E-readers need to have colour displays, and they need to be a lot more robust than the devices so far offered by Amazon, which seem to be excessively fragile.

Fujitsu already has a colour e-book reader on sale in Japan. PlasticLogic says they should have one available for next spring...ish. I'm not sure about the durability, though. As for the price, they're going to start dropping over the next year or two now that so many different companies/products are getting into the market.

The only reason the Kindle couldn't go "international" in the first place was because they want to have "international" pricing, which of course means DRM. Without DRM, Amazon's product could have been global more or less instantly.

Even regular folks think that ten bucks for an e-book is nonsense, and they are also starting to see how DRM reduces the value of an electronic purchase to essentially nil.

In the end, some Chinese company will come out with something technically similar with no strings attached, and they'll wipe the floor with Amazon if they don't improve on this silly strategy. I'd pay maybe a buck for an e-book, just for convenience sake--but not if you can yank it away from me at will.

When shipping and Amazon's other charges are taken into account. This piece of tech costs nearly $345. All you get is a single-use device. For that money you'd be better off buying a netbook. At least then you'd get a decent sized (and colour) screen.

Since it's already been out a year in this model (version 2), I have a sneaking suspicion that this ploy is merely to dump old stock (if Amazon can get anyone to buy it) before a new model is introduced.

Yeah, you can, but the whole thing about ebook readers is they use ePaper and eInk. From what I understand, it has a display that highly resembles paper, has no lighting, etc. This makes it much more like a book, not to mention the form factor. I've tried to read ebooks on my MacBook pro, and I just can't, because it's nothing like a real book, it's awkward and totally terrible outside etc.

It's not just an aversion to LCD either. I'm a big comic book fan (Marvel mainly) but because I'm in a rural area, I ty

When shipping and Amazon's other charges are taken into account. This piece of tech costs nearly $345.

What shipping and other changes? Shipping is free and I don't know of any other charges. Even more when you buy Kindle books you get two discounts: first, the books are usually cheaper (not by much) and second, you don't pay shipping charges. I think that if you buy about 20-30 books it's like you get the device for free.

Even more when you buy Kindle books you get two discounts: first, the books are usually cheaper (not by much) and second, you don't pay shipping charges.

"Not by much" is exactly right, and as far as shipping charges, I've never paid Amazon to ship me anything. They offer free shipping on larger orders, so I'll wait until I have a few books I'm interested in and order them all at once.

I think that if you buy about 20-30 books it's like you get the device for free.

Huh? You think you're going to get a $10 discount per book? Not bloody likely! Maybe if you bought 200 books, the kindle would end up being free... but by then it will probably have broken, and you'll be paying out the ass to have it shipped back to them and repaired/repla

If you're not heavily invested in the single use, then yes, you should buy a netbook. It is, in the end, a niche device, and will remain so until e-paper prices come down (at least).

But, if you are a heavy reader with some cash, it really is a great device to have (with the caveat of the well-documented DRM issues). I personally find its increased my amount of reading a lot, and its wonderful to be able to carry a couple of books and three weekly magazines in my bag in a single small device. A netbook wo

You don't know what they are thinking? I do. They are thinking that they'll be able to sell to that subset of the European market that does not care about 'latin only'. They can learn from their experience in that market, make some customers happy, and earn some money while behind the scenes they can be working on a Kindle that can handle non-latin characters.

In other words, first mover advantage is more important than perfection in a 1.0 product. Amazon understands this.

You don't know what they are thinking? I do. They are thinking that they'll be able to sell to that subset of the European market that does not care about 'latin only'. They can learn from their experience in that market, make some customers happy, and earn some money while behind the scenes they can be working on a Kindle that can handle non-latin characters.

In other words, first mover advantage is more important than perfection in a 1.0 product. Amazon understands this.

Amazon never had the first mover advantage. Sony easily beat Amazon to market. Amazon obviously had more success, however. The Kindle runs Linux and Java. There's no excuse for failing to support unicode fonts in that environment. We're not even talking about poor interface issues for right-to-left languages. Most users for whom the Kindle's latin-only fixation is a problem would be well pleased if the Kindle just used a Unicode font!

It seems no one in the thread has one yet, but there are other people complaining about the poor Japanese support of other ebook readers like SonyReader. Japanese, as well as using different characters often uses vertical-orientation writing with the lines and pages going right to left. Other ebook readers put page divides in the wron

Hopefully what someone else mentioned in another thread on this story is correct: really this is just Amazon's way of making some quick cash off of U.S. tourists and expatriates while shaking out any bugs in their expanded network, in preparation for the launch of a new unit with proper handling of other languages.

Plus people are worried that 600x800 is too small for the kanji characters

A typical bunko (A6 sized) page has around 16 rows of about 40 characters, which would allow characters of about 20x20 pixels. With judicious anti-aliasing and a well-designed font, that should

The main reasons are:- copy protection in Kindle (I usually pass on books that I'm done with - if only to gain room for new books)- reader way too expensive- books way to expensive (paper still is a lot cheaper)- can't highlight phrases / earmark pages / collect citations- did I mention copy protection?

The ebook business will have to go a long way until theyget to the point where mp3 shops are today...

To be fair, you can in fact highlight phrases and earmark pages with the Kindle. In addition to storing them with the novel, if you plug it in to the computer, it appears as a flash drive and you can grab the file with your highlights, which could be convenient for some things.

Seems that that whole globalization push is not meant for 'us', only for 'them' (for variable values of 'us' and 'them'). All the more reason to push back I'd say. If we don't get to pick the same fruits I don't see why we should play by the same rules...

Amazon.co.uk spokesman revealed that foreign customers — including those in Britain — would be paying $13.99 (£8.75) per book instead of the American price of $9.99 (£6.25). That amounts to a 40% premium for the same title." The spokesman said the higher prices reflected higher operating costs and VAT rates.

Good. Paying significantly higher prices might help those who believe, "it is free because the government pays for it" to get a clue.

Anyone own a Sony pocket reader? For 199$ it's able to read epub, pdf and html. I was thinking it might be worth a try since there is a ton of classic books I'd like to read (lovecraft, dickens, verne, etc.).

For about the same price I could also get a ipod/iphone touch, anyone using them as readers?

I have seen a demo of some other pdf reader and turning pages or moving them up/down was an extremely slow and tedious process. It also always caused a very unpleasant flicker of the page.Is this also the case with the Kindle?

The flicker, which I don't consider unpleasant, is due to the physical properties of e-ink. It is a bi-stable screen, which means that little black pixels are electromagnetically moved up and down in white fluid to produce an image that stays without power, pretty much forever. This is why e-readers with e-ink screens have a battery life of over 2 weeks, no screen to actively power.

As far as the kindle goes, K2 is pretty fast, on the order of 250 ms (screen limitation, not hardware/software). I haven't seen